The shoe memorial ceremony, held here on Friday, also initiated the series of events across 32 districts of Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan, marking the Global Movement of 16 Days of Activism for elimination of Violence against Women. These events include change maker (persons who pledge not to commit any violence against women) rallies, walks, mobile vans and press conferences."

The event commemorates the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, starting at 7 p.m. in the Aboriginal gathering space on the UFV Chilliwack campus at Canada Education Park."

Thursday, November 22

VICTORIA — The man who led a public inquiry into the failed police investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton has handed in his report to the B.C. government.

Wally Oppal studied why it took so long for the Vancouver police and RCMP to identify Pickton as the suspect in B.C.’s missing women case, despite warnings he was preying on sex workers on Vancouver’s downtown east side.

The government says the 1,448 page report and its recommendations will be made public in mid December.

Earlier this week, three B.C. advocacy groups declared the inquiry a failure, saying it didn’t do enough to include the voices of marginalized women.

Oppal responded by asking the groups to read his report with an open mind.

He said the report will make strong recommendations to better protect the most vulnerable citizens in society.

The independence of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (MWCI), which examined why serial killer Robert Pickton wasn't caught sooner, is in "grave doubt," concluded three of the province's legal advocacy organizations in a report released yesterday.

But Commissioner Wally Oppal said critics should withhold their judgment until reading his recommendations, which are due the end of this month.

"My report puts forward strong recommendations for change and it is imperative that everyone comes together to ensure that we can better protect our most vulnerable citizens," he said in a statement released yesterday. "If individuals, groups and associations don't find a way to support my report, the recommendations will not be acted upon.

"That does not serve our communities or leave a positive and lasting legacy for the missing and murdered women."

His family called him Boomer, and he was the cutest seven-month-old you've ever seen. One terrifying day in April 2008, Boomer disappeared from his babysitter's home on the Kitigan Zibi First Nations community, near Maniwaki, Que.

Reserve police and Quebec provincial police launched a coordinated search. A helicopter with infrared cameras aided the hunt. Within two days, Boomer was located, safe and sound.

Fast forward four months, and two more go missing in the area - Maisy and Shannon. This time there was no helicopter, and no immediate coordinated police search. The pair have never been found.

Maisy and Shannon are two faces of an overlooked national crisis. Their names join the list of hundreds of First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls murdered, or simply vanished, over the last decade.

"Caring and free-spirited," is how Laurie Odjick describes her daughter. Maisy, 16, loved cutting up fabric to make her own clothes - she had big plans to finish her high school diploma and go to college for fashion design.

On Friday, Sept. 6, 2008, Odjick hugged Maisy and told her she loved her. It was the last time she would ever touch her daughter.

That evening Maisy planned to attend a dance with her friend Shannon and spend the night at Shannon's father's apartment. The next day Shannon walked her father to the bus station, then headed back to the apartment where Maisy was sleeping. He saw her go. Neither girl has been heard from since.

Purses, money and all their belongings were left behind, Odjick says. Wherever the girls went - or wherever they were taken - they had no more than the clothes on their backs.

Meticulously combing police records, news stories and other sources, the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) has compiled a database of 582 murdered and disappeared native women and girls across Canada from 2000-2010. Jennifer Lord, strategic policy liaison for the NWAC, says further tracking since 2010 is impossible because Ottawa slashed funding for such research.

According to the NWAC, native women represent only three per cent of Canadian women but account for 10 per cent of Canada's female homicide victims. Lord tells us if non-aboriginal women in Canada were murdered and vanishing at the same rate as aboriginal women, the dead and disappeared would number more than 18,000.

Across Canada, a suspect is identified and charged in 84 per cent of homicide cases. When it comes to the murder of aboriginal women, barely half are ever solved.

In its recent submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch identified violence against aboriginal women as one of the top human rights issues facing Canada today.

The official investigation for Maisy and Shannon was a tragedy of errors.

Odjick says the Kitigan Zibi reserve police refused to mount a search and declared - with no evidence - that the girls were runaways. No forensic examination of the apartment was conducted. The RCMP offered assistance but were rebuffed by the reserve force. Odjick later learned the reserve police didn't have an established procedure for missing persons cases.

Meanwhile, because Shannon lived off reserve in Maniwaki, the Quebec Provincial Police opened a separate file for her alone, further complicating the investigation.

With no assistance from police, the family and community undertook searches, but turned up nothing.

Months later, organizations like Ottawa-based Search and Rescue Global 1 learned of the case and launched search efforts, but the trail had long gone cold.

Two weeks ago Maisy turned 21. Odjick clings to the hope her daughter is still alive . She now looks for support to launch a human rights appeal, claiming the botched investigation denied Maisy her right to justice.

Meanwhile, Maisy's case, and the hundreds more like it, have left aboriginal groups with a whole lot of "whys."

Why are indigenous women at a greater risk for violence? Why do so many of these cases go unsolved? Why does a lion cub get more media and police attention than two young girls?

Groups like the NWAC and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) are urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to launch a national inquiry to find answers.

And unlike the B.C. inquiry after the Willie Pickton case, this time they want those affected - families and aboriginal groups - to be part of the process.

"We cannot lose any more of our people to violence. We must together address the root causes of why violence is so prevalent among indigenous women, and we must engage directly with those most affected to ensure we get it right," said AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo.

You can support the calls for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women by joining the AFN postcard campaign at http: // www.afn.ca/index.php/en/ policy-areas/i-pledge.- end -violence and signing the NWAC petition at www.nwac.ca.

Craig and Marc Kielburger are founders of the international charity and educational partner Free The Children.

Its youth empowerment event, We Day, is in eight cities across Canada this year, inspiring more than 100,000 attendees.

Monday, November 5

My colleague Bryan Baynham Q.C. has been taking to the television and radio airwaves trumpeting the civil lawsuit he has apparently brought against me on behalf of Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Jim Brown as “the largest privacy breach case in Canada”. To support this hyperbole, Mr. Baynham will have to persuade a court that a man who posted photographs of himself on the World Wide Web, on a website that describes itself as “the world’s most popular FREE social network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky communities”, had his privacy interests violated when the Vancouver Sun published its July 16, 2012 story about Cpl. Brown’s off-duty hobby.

This photograph appears on the website’s home page, as one of more than eight million photos reportedly shared there:

Cpl. Brown (who is not depicted in the sordid photograph reproduced above) was involved in the Pickton investigation almost three years before rookie Cst. Nathan Wells executed a search warrant on David and Robert Pickton’s Port Coquitlam property in February of 2002. Cpl. Brown produced informant Ross Caldwell in July of 1999 and apparently conducted surveillance on the Pickton property long before Robert “Willy” Pickton was arrested and charged with 26 murders. In our view, as counsel for the murdered women’s families, Cpl. Brown and his Coquitlam RCMP colleagues should all have been called as witnesses at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to explain why they failed to stop the largest serial killer in Canadian history. If he had been called as a witness, Cpl. Brown could have explained whether his off-duty interest in “bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism, fetish and kink” had anything to do with the Mounties’ foot-dragging and inaction.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry just received another extension of time. I wish it would use it to receive testimony from important witnesses like Cpl Brown and his coworkers. Too many lingering questions remain unanswered.